[Annual Rodent Control Issue] Fatal Attraction

Several months ago, PCT surveyed pest management professionals from throughout the country to learn what they considered to be the best rodent attractants for mechanical traps and glueboards. A majority of the approximately 300 responses that came in pointed to peanut butter as their attractant of choice. For them, it’s always part of their service kit; it’s readily available; it’s inexpensive; and it’s easy to transport. Plus, it’s easy to apply.

But others like to utilize such varied lures as dried fruit, corn chips, walnuts, dried shrimp, strawberry jam, chocolate, marshmallows, maple candy, Gummy Bears, and cotton balls saturated with vanilla extract. Some even reported success using dried apricots, Snickers candy bars, spearmint gum, and horse feed (barley) mixed with peanut butter. Cooking grease, nesting materials, sandwich bread rolled into a dough ball, beef jerky, hamburger, and dog food were also used. A number of industry products were also mentioned were Bell Laboratories’ Provoke Professional Mouse and Rat Attractants, Liphatech’s Maki Mini Blocks and Trapper Jack’s Professional Macadamia Nut Lure.

According to Bobby Corrigan, president of RMC Pest Management Consulting and renowned rodent control expert, if you could ask rodents themselves what they like the best, were they able to talk, their answers, too, would vary across the board.

“There have been serious Ph.D. studies on this exact subject and they have concluded that rodents have no specific preference. They are what we call opportunistic foragers,” Corrigan said. “Rats and mice eat just about anything they see because they don’t know when they’ll next encounter food. They like what we humans like — peanut butter, fruits, sweets, chocolate, etc. That makes perfect sense because they have similar energy, muscle growth, and reproduction systems to what we humans have. That’s why they are used for medical research. ”

Corrigan said that peanut butter seems to be a universal attractant. “If you smeared peanut butter on boats, I think whales would lick it off.” But, he recommends a mixture of attractants to his rodent control clients, including oatmeal, peanut butter, meat or chicken, and dental floss. The latter is included because rodents like to gather string for their nests. “I’ve found that mix to be quite effective.”

BEWARE OF PEANUT ALLERGIES. Long-time pest control industry consultant Larry Pinto advises pest management professionals to ask customers about peanut allergies before using peanut butter as an attractant. Writing in his publication, Techletter, he said about 1.5 million people in the United States suffer from a severe allergy to the proteins found in peanuts. “A certain percentage of them, even with slight exposure to peanuts, can experience a life-threatening reaction. Pets can also have peanut allergies. So make it a habit to always ask your customer whether anyone, including pets, has peanut allergies.”

One of the reasons Bell Laboratories launched the Provoke products was to provide pest management professionals with a hypoallergenic product that could be used in sensitive accounts where food allergies are a concern, according to Peter Martin, technical director, Bell Labs.

Ted Bruesch, national technical support manager for Milwaukee, Wis.-based Lipha-tech, said that pest management professionals are always trying to find the most effective attractant. “Peanut butter works well and it’s easy to carry around. But it spoils easily,” he said. Like Pinto, Bruesch suggested being aware of your customers’ peanut allergies.

Other lures that Bruesch has seen work well include orange marmalade, cherry preserves, goldfish crackers and milder yellow cheeses like Colby. “Strongly flavored cheeses with active mold aren’t too effective,” he said. “Hot dogs and sausages seem to do a good job of attracting rats, and bacon works well on mice.”

PEANUT BUTTER AS A FAILSAFE. Richard Silvani, president and owner of Environmental Pest Systems, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., feels the same about peanut butter as many of his fellow pest professionals. “It’s a failsafe for me. I use it over and over again with success. But it must be fresh. Rats are discerning creatures. They will ignore stale peanut butter,” he said.

Silvani also has been alternating peanut butter with Bell Labs’ Provoke, depending on the situation.

In Louisville, Ky., Randy Bright, operations manager for Bright Pest Control, reports that he doesn’t usually use attractants on his traps. Instead, he advocates proper trap placement and believes “you can catch almost anything with the correct trap placement.”

Bell Laboratories’ Martin stressed this same point. “There is a misconception with attractants. People think that whatever they put on the trap will bring the animals in from across the room, and that’s not really the case,” he said. “Attractants are useful for getting rodents to more fully commit to the trap or device once they are in the vicinity of it.”

MOLASSES AND BIRDSEED. Jack Brans, owner of Brans Pest Control, New Orleans, La., has tried several attractants for rodent control. One of his five-year-old company’s first accounts was an apartment complex with drop ceilings. “They had an active infestation of Norway rats that were heard scurrying across the ceiling. When some ceiling tiles fell off in the complex’s community center, down came the rats,” he said. After a thorough inspection, he determined where the entry points were and sealed them. “Using snap traps we caught about 120 critters. I created my own lure — molasses and birdseed. The molasses [is] a sticking agent for the birdseed, which seems to be a favorite food of rodents. We did all our servicing at night, when the rats were most active.”

Brans also said he found success using Provoke to attract mice. Bell Labs launched Provoke Professional Mouse Attractant in 2006, followed one year later by Provoke Professional Rat Attractant. “The challenge we had for rats was the same type of materials that were attractive to mice did not appeal to rats,” said Bell Labs’ Peter Martin. “Rats are much pickier than are mice, so we took a little longer developing the one for rats.”

In Buford, Ga., some 30 miles away from Atlanta, Bill Haynes, president of the exterminating company bearing his name, tries to minimize the use of pesticides in his pest control work. For rodent control he primarily uses peanut butter as a lure, “but if we see that rats or mice appear to be eating some other type of food, we’ll use it instead.”

According to Haynes, he has encountered several difficult rodent infestations in some churches and warehouses and has used Provoke there with success.

DOG FOOD. David Castro, president of Merlin Pest Control, Dover, N.J., recently serviced an account where a customer complained of mice consistently getting into Eukanuba dog food. “I realized that product had potential for being a good attractant and have used it with success ever since,” he said.

“I’ve also had success using blue cheese tied onto snap traps.”

A PIECE OF THE PUZZLE. Silvani, Castro, Haynes and Brans each agree that rodent attractants play a role in controlling this significant threat to public health. But it’s important to remember that the use of attractants is only part of the solution. As Bright explained, “The first thing to be done on a rodent control job is a thorough inspection of the problem area. Then, after assessing the situation, you’ve got to remove conducive conditions, seal entry points, and use effective baits and rodenticides.”

The author is a Milwaukee-based writer.

PCO as Attractant

On the subject of rodent attractants, Randy Bright, operations manager for Bright Pest Control, Louisville, Ky., said (tongue in cheek) that he felt himself to be an attractant. Why? “At one service call,” he recalled, “I opened the wooden door to the crawlspace and immediately saw a big rat on the other side staring at me. I was startled but didn’t want to make a sudden move. We looked at each other for a half-minute or so and then the rat slowly turned around and crawled away from me. I think I moved from an attractant in that rat’s eyes to a repellent. I took that personally.”